For the Visual Communications Assessment

For the ACC 2305 and 2306 students: this is for the visual communications assessment. Below you'll see a variety of charts related to the police policy called "stop and frisk." We discussed it in class recently since it came up in the first presidential debate.

The policy allows police to search for weapons under certain circumstances - primarily anything related to the likelihood that a crime is about to take place. This raises 4th Amendment questions - since these searches are based on a looser standard than probable cause, equal protection issues - since police can use racial identity as a criteria for conducting a search, as well as simple questions about whether the policy is effective in reducing crime.

Below you'll see a handful of charts that display data regarding the policy. Look through them and see if you can find out what they are telling us about it. You can go in a variety of directions with this.



 

From the Houston Chronicle: Near Northside residents call for civility ordinance, saying drugs and vagrancy are intolerable

For 2306, and our discussion of cities.

- Click here for the article.

A man plops down on the stoop in nearly 100-degree heat outside the Falcon grocery store on North Main. He loiters, leaning on his black rolling suitcase, doing little of nothing.

Alida and George Rodriguez, who greet many of their customers at the store by name, don't know the dark-haired man. They assume he's waiting for mealtime at one of several nearby soup kitchens.

George goes outside to see if he needs some help. Inside, Alida explains that some patrons might not stop by with the man sitting there because they don't want to be asked for money.

And, if he comes inside, she fears, the worst could happen. Last year, Alida, 76, was assaulted and temporarily held hostage by a vagrant man at the corner store her father founded decades ago.

That's why she and dozens of area residents have signed a petition filed in August asking for the city's "civility ordinance" to include Near Northside. The regulation prohibits sitting, laying or sleeping on sidewalks from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. in six central Houston neighborhoods.

From the Pew Research Center: Where the Public Stands on Religious Liberty vs. Nondiscrimination - Two-thirds say employers should provide birth control in insurance plans, but public is split over same-sex wedding services and use of public bathrooms by transgender people

The battle between the equal protection and free exercise clauses continues to rage.

- Click here for the article.

The U.S. public expresses a clear consensus on the contentious question of whether employers who have religious objections to contraception should be required to provide it in health insurance plans for their employees. Fully two-thirds of American adults say such businesses should be required to cover birth control as part of their employees’ insurance plans, according to a new Pew Research Center survey, while just three-in-ten say businesses should be allowed to refuse to cover contraception for religious reasons.

The survey of more than 4,500 U.S. adults explores recent controversies that have pitted claims of religious liberty and traditional morality against civil rights and nondiscrimination policies. And it finds that Americans are more closely divided on two other hotly debated questions: whether businesses should be able to refuse service to same-sex couples, and whether transgender people should be required to use particular restrooms.

About half of U.S. adults (49%) say businesses that provide wedding services, such as catering or flowers, should be required to provide those services to same-sex couples as they would for any other couple. But a nearly equal share (48%) say businesses should be able to refuse services to same-sex couples if the business owner has religious objections to homosexuality.

And in the debate over bathroom use by transgender people, roughly half of Americans (51%) say transgender people should be allowed to use public restrooms of the gender with which they currently identify, while nearly as many (46%) say transgender individuals should be required to use restrooms of the gender they were born into.

From the Texas Tribune: Lawmaker Job Has Lousy Pay, but Great Benefits

The previous story refers to the retirement pay for members of the Texas Legislature, which ofsets their otherwise low pay.

Here's detail.

- Click here for the article.

Serving in the Legislature, while enormously time-consuming, is supposed to be a part-time gig for the civically interested Texan. Keep the 9-to-5 job that pays the mortgage and feeds the family and, for 140 days every two years, come to Austin and legislate on behalf of your fellow citizens. In between, you and your staff can take care of constituent services, helping this one obtain vital records like birth and death certificates, helping that one with a regulatory issue in some agency.

That arrangement obviously requires some forbearance at work. At a minimum, a lawmaker will spend at least four days a week in Austin in January through May of every odd-numbered year. It’s not easy, but neither is serving on a school board or a city council or doing volunteer work.

The pay genuinely stinks. It’s $600 per month, plus a daily allowance of $150 for those days when a lawmaker is in Austin or on the road for official business. Voters have turned back various attempts to turn these into full-time jobs with full-time pay.
That doesn’t mean it’s not lucrative in the long term.

Texas legislators who serve at least eight years are entitled to start collecting pension benefits at age 60. If a lawmaker has at least 12 years of service, the benefits can start when the lawmaker is 50.

The benefits aren’t based on that $600-per-month paycheck, either, but on the salary paid to state district judges. That salary, set by the same legislators whose pensions depend on it, is $125,000. There’s a formula ($125,000 x .023 x years of service), but the bottom line is that retired Texas lawmakers get an annual pension of $2,875 for every year they were in office, as long as they have met the minimum service requirements.

It adds up. That eight-year lawmaker would get $23,000 annually starting at age 60. After 12 years? $34,500, starting at the ripe old age of 50.

Every case has particulars — adjustments and deductions for this and that — but it’s easy to figure a lawmaker’s base benefit just by knowing the years in office. For instance, former Speaker Tom Craddick — the longest-serving state legislator in office and the second-longest in state history — took office in 1969 and will have 44 years of service at the end of his current term. The Midland Republican is running, unopposed, for re-election. But if he were to retire at the end of this term, his annual pension benefit would be $126,500.

From the Austin American - Statesman: Austin state Rep. Dawnna Dukes to step down amid investigation

Texas ethics rules are loose, but not non-existent.

- Click here for the article.

Dukes drew the attention of investigators earlier this year when she was accused of misusing her staff for nonstate work.

Michael French, an employee she fired shortly after he complained, said that Dukes was forcing her employees to work on state time on a pet project, theAfrican American Community Heritage Festival. That event, launched 17 years ago and co-founded by Dukes, raised money for Huston-Tillotson University.

Dukes maintained that the directive was acceptable because the festival benefited the community.

“There is not an issue with employees working on community events that benefit the constituency,” Dukes told the American-Statesman at the time. “I take great pride in this event being well organized and being unblemished. For 17 years we have not had one problem.”

After looking into the issue, the state auditor’s office referred its concerns to the Travis County district attorney’s office, which opened an investigation. The Texas Rangers soon joined in.

During the probe, other allegations of wrongdoing came to light. A text message by Dukes obtained by the Statesman indicated that she was using state money to pay a legislative aide for gas needed to drive Dukes’ daughter to and from school and run other personal errands. The employee received a $268-per-month raise on Sept. 1, 2015, according to documents obtained through the Texas Public Information Act.

She will resign after the election apparently in order to maximize her retirement pay.

Dukes is allowing her current term to expire rather than resigning immediately, allowing her to make an extra $3,220 per year in retirement benefits from the state because serving any amount in January counts as a full year when calculating pension benefits. Dukes will make $74,060 per year in retirement, a substantial bump from the $41,000 she’s making over two years in her current term.

Dukes’ name will still appear on the Nov. 8 general election ballot. If she beats Republican Gabriel Nila in the heavily Democratic district, her seat will be vacant starting Jan. 10 until a special election that will probably be held in the spring, while the Legislature is in session.

Because there are no other Travis County races scheduled for the spring, the special election could cost taxpayers as much as $200,000, Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said.

From the New Republic: The Founding Fathers’ Power Grab - A new book argues that the Constitution was designed to make the United States less democratic—and to enrich the framers.

It's not a new allegation.

The Book is titled: The Framer's Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution.

- Click here for the review.

In his impressive new book, The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution, Bancroft Prize-winning legal historian Michael J. Klarman seeks to understand why the Framers produced such an undemocratic plan in the first place, and how they managed to get it approved over strong opposition in the state conventions. At the risk of oversimplifying—the book comes in at more than 800 pages—Klarman argues that the Constitution is undemocratic because it was designed to protect wealthy merchants and landowners from the redistributive tendencies of popular government. “The Constitution was,” he writes, “a conservative counterrevolution against what leading American statesmen regarded as the irresponsible economic measures enacted by a majority of state legislatures in the mid-1780s.” More specifically, “the Constitution was designed in part to block legislation for tax and debt relief.”

How was the Constitution adopted in spite of vigorous and cogent objections from its democracy-loving critics? Klarman argues that the Federalists essentially cheated and strong-armed their way to ratification. The book seems intended as a bracing antidote to the phenomenon that Klarman has elsewhere labeled “constitutional idolatry,” his term for “our misguided tendency to blindly worship the Constitution” and the men who wrote it.

The idea that the Constitution was really about money is not new, although it has lost favor in recent decades to “ideological” interpretations that focus on the Framers’ moral worldview and political goals. Klarman draws the core of his argument from Woody Holton’s 2007 Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, which was inspired in turn by one of the great history books of the 20th century, Charles A. Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913). Roughly stated, these books argue that during the period after the Revolutionary War most state constitutions were highly democratic, at least for the era. At the same time, the country was suffering a post-war financial crisis that was ruinous to artisans and small farmers. Not surprisingly, common people began to use their new political influence to create economic policies that were favorable to themselves (and disadvantageous to creditors and wealthy citizens), such as inflationary monetary policy and progressive taxation. The Constitution, according to the economic interpretation, was the 1 percent’s revenge, a countermeasure designed to undermine the democratic governments in the states, thereby returning power to wealthy elites and insulating them from popular opinion.

Roll Call: House Easily Passes 10-Week Stopgap Spending Bill

They join the Senate - see story below.

- Click here for the article.

The House on a 342-85 vote easily passed a 10-week stopgap spending bill late Wednesday, clearing the measure for President Barack Obama’s signature with two days to spare before a government shutdown.

The Obama administration voiced support for passage of the continuing resolution in a statement of administration policy. The House was expected to adjourn later Wednesday and not return until after the November elections.

The House vote, as well as an earlier Senate vote of 72-26, were in contrast to weeks of battles over whether money to fight the Zika virus should be made available to Planned Parenthood locations in Puerto Rico and over emergency aid for stricken Flint, Michigan. Congressional leaders smoothed over a final impasse by committing to include financial help for Flint's contaminated water system in subsequent legislation expected to clear in the lame-duck session after the elections.

But it’s clear that as time ran out to get the stopgap spending bill to the president, other issues that were sticking points will pop up again in spending negotiations on tap for December.

“This short time frame will allow Congress to complete our annual appropriations work without jeopardizing important government functions,” House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers said of the CR, shortly before the chamber cleared the measure.

In addition to continuing fiscal 2016 levels for programs through Dec. 9 — though that level was knocked down by just under half a percent to fit under budget caps — the package also includes $1.1 billion in funding to respond to the Zika virus, $500 million in flood relief for Louisiana and other states, and full fiscal 2017 appropriations for military construction and veterans.

During floor debate, Rogers touted the fiscal 2017 Military Construction-VA bill, which he said if enacted would represent the first time since 2009 that lawmakers have pushed through a regular appropriations bill that resulted from a bicameral conference.

“It’s not perfect, but it ensures we meet our nation’s critical needs,” the Kentucky Republican said, adding, “At this point, it is what we must do to fulfill our congressional responsibility, to keep the lights on in our government.”

From Politifact: Donald Trump and Lester Holt clash over whether stop-and-frisk is constitutional in New York

More detail regarding an issue brought up in Monday's debate.

Turns out Trump and Holt are kinda right and kinda wrong.

For 2305 this illustrates the role of the federal courts in overseeing local policing, and it touches on the 4th Amendment, due process, equal protection, constitutional interpretation among other topics. For 2306, this helps us look ahead to criminal justices and the local use of police powers, in addition to federalism.

- Click here for the article.

As it turns out, Holt and Trump are both a little bit right and a little bit wrong. But Trump's more wrong than Holt.

Stop-and-frisk is the practice of a police officer stopping and questioning a person (the stop), then patting the person down for weapons (the frisk). Stops and frisks are legal, in New York and everywhere else.

In its decision in the 1968 case Terry vs. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that an officer can legally stop a person if the officer has reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot. And if the officer has a reasonable suspicion that this person is armed, he or she can legally frisk the person for weapons. Because of that reasonable suspicion standard, the court said these stops would be consistent with the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

A 2013 case before the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Floyd vs. City of New York, raised the issue of the constitutionality of New York City’s stop-and-frisk policies between 2004 and 2012.

Judge Shira Scheindlin found that New York City had been conductingunconstitutional stops and frisks on two grounds: Officers were stopping and frisking people without reasonable suspicion, in violation of Terry and the Fourth Amendment; and a disproportionate number of those stopped and frisked were minorities, in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

"Both statistical and anecdotal evidence showed that minorities are indeed treated differently than whites," Scheindlin wrote in her opinion. "For example, once a stop is made, blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be subjected to the use of force than whites, despite the fact that whites are more likely to be found with weapons or contraband."

So Holt was right to note that a court found New York City had an unconstitutional stop-and-frisk policy because police had been disproportionately targeting black and Hispanic people.

But the Floyd case was specific to New York City’s particular way of conducting stops and frisks between 2004 and 2012. Scheindlin did not rule all stops and frisks unconstitutional, and her findings were consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision in Terry. Scheindlin ruled that New York City could continue to conduct stops and frisks as long as they made some changes.

"Stop-and-frisk was not outlawed," said Andrew Schaffer, former deputy commissioner for legal matters for the New York Police Department and an adjunct professor at New York University Law School. The ruling only sought to correct a supposed problem of officers making stops without a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and disproportionately stopping black and Hispanic people.

Schaffer added, "The Floyd decision in New York did not and could not overruleTerry."
"The judge made it very clear that she was not finding stop-and-frisk as a general practice unconstitutional," said David Rudovsky, a leading civil rights attorney and senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

So Holt’s claim — "stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York" — isn’t quite precise because it makes it seem as if the judge decided that all stops and frisks were unconstitutional in New York, when really her ruling said New York had to stop and frisk differently. New York cops still stop and frisk today.

But it also isn’t quite correct for Trump to call Holt’s claim "wrong" because that implies there was no finding of unconstitutionality in New York’s practices or that Scheindlin’s ruling was tossed out, when really it still stands.

From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: In Texas, You Can Fight City Hall

It looks like local control will be a major issue during the next legislative session.

- Click here for the article.

“Local” might be the byword for fancy farm-to-market restaurants, but it can be a dirty word at the Texas Capitol.

The state Legislature has become the appeals court for the state’s local governments. Companies and industries snubbed by local laws are increasingly asking state lawmakers to turn things their way — and it’s working.

. . . The next tests will start when the Legislature meets for its next regular session in January. This time, one big fight involves local regulation of drivers for ride-hailing companies like Lyft and Uber. Another is a straight-up attempt by the state to limit local officials’ ability to raise taxes without voter approval.

The ride-hailing issue sets up like the fracking issue did. Austin voters were asked whether the ride-hailing drivers should pass security checks, like cab drivers do. Uber and Lyft said they would leave if voters approved the regulations, irking voters with their methods and the explicit threat. Voters backed the regulations. The companies left. They threatened to leave Houston, too, over regulations there.

Industry allies in the Legislature have promised to file a statewide ride-hailing law that doesn’t hobble the companies.

. . . The property tax proposals are the latest attempts by state officials to control local property tax increases. The state doesn’t have a property tax itself — that’s unconstitutional — but cities, counties and school districts are state inventions and are subject to state regulation and some control. And in this case, some state officials want to give voters more control over property tax increases.

That’s not how the local governments see it, however. They believe, with some evidence, that state officials just want to make it harder to raise the money they contend they need to do what their voters demand of them. Some take it further, saying the need for more tax money is driven, in part, by what the state requires local governments to do.

You might argue that the property tax debate is a case of checks and balances, of one set of elected officials keeping another set of elected officials in line. You might even be right.
Other cases — fracking, smoking, texting while driving, hailing rides, banning plastic supermarket bags among them — are efforts to replace local laws with state ones.

From the Houston Chronicle: Feds file discrimination suit against owners of Midtown bar Gaslamp

For out look at civil rights.

- Click here for the article.

A Midtown bar that was accused of charging cover charges only to non-white patrons and turning other minorities away under the guise of "dress code violations" is now the subject of a federal discrimination lawsuit.

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the owners and operators of 360 Midtown, which was formerly Gaslamp, at the corner of Brazos and Hadley streets.

Scandal embroiled the bar last year when three black men made the racism allegations last year.

Brandon Ball, Dan Scarbrough and Ken Piggee — all attorneys — said that when they approached the doors of Gaslamp, the doormen immediately told them that to enter, they had to pay $20.

Deciding against it, the trio went to a nearby bar and later walked by Gaslamp.

"We're looking, and there are white people going in and getting their hands stamped," Ball told the Chronicle in September 2015. "They were going in and not paying anything."

The three sat and watched the door for some time, they said last year, watching white customers enter free of charge and minorities get turned away. They said they spoke with the others as they were turned away.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

It alleges that Ayman Jarrah and his company, Land Guardian Inc., discriminated against African-American, Hispanic and Asian-American patrons "by charging such persons a cover charge to enter the establishment, while not imposing such a charge on similarly situated white persons, and denying such persons the right to enter the establishment while admitting similarly situated white patrons."

From Politico: Appeals court - Ballot selfie ban unconstitutional

It turns out that you can post selfies from the voting booth.

Let's see if the Supreme Court decides to review it.

- Click here for the article.

A federal appeals court has ruled that New Hampshire's ban on voters taking and publishing photos of their voted ballots is unconstitutional. 

The Boston-based 1st Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling that the law, revised in 2014, ran afoul of the First Amendment because lawmakers could not show that it was tailored to the purported threat of vote-buying and voter intimidation. The unanimous, three-judge appeals court panel also questioned how serious and present a threat that was.

“Digital photography, the internet, and social media are not unknown quantities – they have been ubiquitous for several election cycles, without being shown to have the effect of furthering vote buying or voter intimidation. As the plaintiffs note, ‘small cameras’ and digital photography ‘have been in use for at least 15 years,’ and New Hampshire cannot identify a single complaint of vote buying or intimidation related to a voter's publishing a photograph of a marked ballot during that period,” Judge Sandra Lynch wrote, in an opinion joined by Judges Ojetta Thompson and Kermit Lipez.

“The prohibition on ballot selfies reaches and curtails the speech rights of all voters, not just those motivated to cast a particular vote for illegal reasons,” Lynch added. “New Hampshire does so in the name of trying to prevent a much smaller hypothetical pool of voters who, New Hampshire fears, may try to sell their votes. New Hampshire admits that no such vote-selling market has in fact emerged. And to the extent that the State hypothesizes this will make intimidation of some voters more likely, that is no reason to infringe on the rights of all voters.”

“The ballot-selfie prohibition is like ‘burn[ing down] the house to roast the pig,’” the court's opinion added, borrowing language from a 1957 Supreme Court ruling.

From the Washington Post: Senate passes bill to avert government shutdown after Flint deal struck

As usual, appropriations bills will not be passed in time for the new fiscal year, instead a continuing resolution will be passed.

For detail: What Is a Continuing Resolution?

Now the House must vote on it.

- Click here for the article.

The Senate cemented an agreement Wednesday to avoid an Oct. 1 government shutdown after House Republicans allowed a vote on federal aid to address the water crisis in Flint, Mich., removing a major obstacle in negotiations.

Senators voted 72-15 to pass a stopgap measure that will keep the government open until Dec. 9, giving appropriators time to pass 2017 spending bills. The measure also provides $1.1 billion in funds to address the Zika virus and $500 million in emergency flood relief.
Both the Zika and flood funding were subject to long and painstaking negotiations between majority Republicans and minority Democrats, but it was funding for Flint that threatened to push matters past the brink.

Democrats made clear earlier this week they would not support the spending bill unless Republicans moved to guarantee Flint aid, while GOP leaders countered the Senate had approved Flint aid earlier this month in a separate water projects bill.

The impasse was broken late Tuesday after House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) struck a deal allowing a vote to attach $170 million in Flint relief to the House version of the water bill. That bill is expected to pass late Wednesday; the stopgap spending measure is expected to pass shortly afterward.
Ryan, addressing the Economic Club of Washington Wednesday morning, said the amendment would “help unlock” the spending bill. “We should be able to move this through, I believe, before Friday,” he said.

By Wednesday morning, Senate Democrats were satisfied that, thanks to the House deal, Flint would be addressed once Congress returns after the Nov. 8 election.

“I am convinced that there is going to be help for Flint in the lame duck,” Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said on the Senate floor. “They’ve been waiting for help, they deserve help, and I am very happy it is going to come.”

Wednesday’s Senate votes capped weeks of frustration for Republicans, who complained that Democrats had engaged in bad-faith spending negotiations aimed at keeping vulnerable GOP incumbents in Washington rather than on the campaign trail.

Nice huh?

From the Harris County Auditor's Office: The Final Estimate of Available Resources Fiscal Year 2015

A fun little read for 2306 - and a little detail in what the county auditor does.

It also provides a good list of all the components of Harris County's government.

- Click here for the report.

From the intro, addressed to members of the commissioners court:

In accordance with the Texas Local Government Code (LGC) §111.063, the County Auditor has prepared a “Final Statement of Estimated Available Resources” to be used in developing the Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 Appropriations Budget for Harris County and the Harris County Flood Control District. The estimate of available resources is comprised of available beginning cash and cash equivalents, plus estimated revenues and transfers‐in for the upcoming fiscal year. The available beginning cash balances for FY 2015 have been adjusted by a projection of the County’s accounts receivable and liability account balances at January 28, 2014. The “Final Statement of Estimated Available Resources” includes all information as required by Chapter 111 of the Local Government Code:

 Outstanding obligations of the County. 

 Cash on hand to the credit of each fund.

 Funds received from all sources during the preceding fiscal year.

 Funds and revenues estimated to be received from all sources during the preceding fiscal year.

 Funds and revenues estimated to be received during the ensuing fiscal year.

 A statement of all accounts and contracts on which sums are due to or owed by the County as of the last day of the preceding fiscal year, except for taxes or court costs.

If that's not enough and you need more on county budgets, here you go:

- Harris County Budget Management Department.
- Brazoria County Budget Fiscal Year 2015.

From ABC13: HARRIS COUNTY APPROVES $105M ASTRODOME REVITALIZATION PLAN

Harris County Commissioners Court has decided what to do with the dome - parking, storage and exhibit spaces. Why this does not need approval by the voters I do not know, perhaps because the county can afford the plan already.

- Click here for the article.

From Politico: Congress hands Obama first veto override

I did not call this correctly.

- Click here for info on S.2040 - Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act.

- Click here for the article.

Congress overwhelmingly rejected President Barack Obama’s bid to derail legislation allowing families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia, handing him the first veto override of his presidency during his final year in office.

The Senate took the first step Wednesday, voting 97-1 to override Obama's veto of the 9/11 bill. The House quickly followed with a 348-77 vote.

The sweeping popularity of the legislation — known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act — made it basically inevitable that the measure would ultimately become law, despite fierce objections from the Obama administration. The bill, known informally as JASTA, sailed through the Senate with no objections in the spring and was voice-voted in the House earlier this month.

“This legislation is really about pursuing justice,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), one of the chief sponsors of the bill, along with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “The families have already suffered too much. They’ve already suffered untold tragedy, of course, and they deserve to find a path to closure that only justice can provide.”

Schumer said "overriding a presidential veto is something we don't take lightly."

"But it was important in this case that the families of the victims of 9/11 be allowed to pursue justice," Schumer added. "Even if that pursuit causes some diplomatic discomforts."

- For House activity on 9/28/16 click here.
- For the vote in the House click here.
- For the vote in the Senate click here.

From NBC News: Supreme Court Has Reasons to Dodge Trans Bathroom Case

The Supreme Court may - or may not - decide whether sexual identity is a protected category under the equal protection clause.

- Click here for the article.

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to decide within weeks whether to hear a major transgender rights case for the first time, a dispute involving which bathroom a Virginia high school student can use, but the justices have reasons to duck the issue.

The case involves a 17-year-old transgender student named Gavin Grimm, who was born female but identifies as male and is mounting a legal challenge to gain the right to use the boys' bathroom at his public high school in Gloucester County, Virginia.

The local school board is asking the justices to hear its appeal of an April 19 ruling by the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that found that transgender students are protected under U.S. laws that bar sex-based discrimination.

If the high court refuses to hear the case, the justices would leave in place the groundbreaking appeals court ruling in favor of transgender rights that Grimm could use the bathroom of the student's choice. If the justices hear it, it would be one of the biggest cases of the 2016-17 term that opens Oct. 3.

The Supreme Court remains shorthanded with eight justices, split with four liberals and four conservatives, following the Feb. 13 death of Antonin Scalia. Legal experts say the court may have an incentive to dodge the issue, the latest front line in the battle over lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights.

The high court so far has shown an inclination for its new term toward taking up technical, narrow cases, such as several on intellectual property rights, while it remains down one justice. This may be because the court is eager to avoid issuing 4-4 deadlocked rulings, which happened on four occasions after Scalia's death.

. . . The Supreme Court often lets novel legal issues like transgender bathroom rights percolate in lower courts before taking a case, as it did with gay marriage before ruling in 2015 to allow it nationwide.

The Supreme Court also frequently refuses to take cases in which the various regional federal appeals courts have not issued conflicting rulings. The ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was the first of its kind.

- Click here for the 4th Circuit Court's decision.

For more on the case:

- Reason: US 4th Circuit Rules in Favor of Trans Teen; May Impact North Carolina Law.
- The Guardian: Transgender student in Virginia wins key fight on bathroom access.
- The Atlantic: A Transgender-Rights Ruling Blocked.
- ACLU: G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board.

From the Houston Chronicle: Anderson, Ogg debate DA priorities - Anderson, Ogg spar over victim's jailing, evidence scandal

Who will be Harris County's next District Attorney?

- Click here for the article.

Before the fireworks erupted on national television between Clinton and Trump on Monday, Houston saw its own fiery debate between the candidates for Harris County district attorney.

Republican incumbent Devon Anderson and Democratic challenger Kim Ogg pulled no punches in the only debate scheduled for the county's top law enforcement post.

"I think it's apparent for anybody who has been listening to Ms. Ogg that she is clearly not fit to be the Harris County district attorney," Anderson said in closing after a raucous debate in front of more than 300 people. "She can't do half of what she says she's going to do."

In her closing, Ogg reminded voters of the litany of problems that have erupted across the county's criminal justice system.

"We have a justice system that should rely upon evidence, but instead is being run by prosecutors who are led, apparently, by a win-at-all costs philosophy," Ogg said. "I have a vision for a justice system that treats us all the same under the law, that tries to help people, not just convict them."

The two women sparred over the treatment of a mentally ill rape victim who was jailed for several weeks last year by prosecutors under Anderson. They also talked at length about the emerging scandal over the unauthorized destruction of evidence at the Precinct 4 Constable's Office.

From the Daily Texan: State lawmakers debate local control, preview agendas for upcoming session

More on the upcoming 85th session, with special focus on the rights of cities.

- Click here for the article.

The 85th Legislature will finally put to test several theories on what role the state can constitutionally play in policy disputes with localities, which could potentially impact Austin’s ride-hailing regulations and transgender bathroom ordinance, according to state lawmakers Saturday.

As part of the 2016 Texas Tribune Festival, two separate panels of state senators and representatives previewed the upcoming session of the Legislature, which reconvenes in January.

Both panels heavily focused on the issue of local control and whether the state can overturn city council policies through statewide legislation.

Legislators briefly touched on the issue with a bill overturning Denton’s hydraulic fracturing ban last session that was signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott.

“There is no 10th Amendment for cities,” said state Sen. Konni Burton, R-Colleyville, at the Senate Agenda panel, citing the state’s protection against intrusion from the federal government. “We created the cities, the state did, so we have every right to say ‘you are overreaching.’”

In May, Austin voters sided with city officials by reaffirming ride-hailing regulations — primarily mandatory fingerprint-based background checks — through an initiative at the ballot, and ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft ceased services as they had promised after Austinites voted to keep the regulations.

From the Texas Tribune: Paxton Blasts Clean Power Plan Ahead of High-Profile Legal Arguments

More conflict between Texas and the EPA.

- Click here for the article.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday accused the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of trying to “force Texas to change how we regulate energy production,” through what he called an “unprecedented expansion of federal authority.”

“What we need is more reliable energy — not less, and the EPA is trying to stop that,” the Republican said while appearing on a panel in Washington, D.C.

Paxton specifically targeted the Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s state-by-state effort to fight climate change by shifting away from coal power to cleaner-burning natural gas and renewable resources.

His appearance on the panel, organized by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, came one day before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is to hear four hours of oral arguments over the carbon dioxide-cutting rule. Those watching the litigation say the outcome could make or break Obama’s legacy on climate change.

Mentioned in the article:

- The EPA.
- The Clean Power Plan.
- Texas Public Policy Foundation.
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
- Environment Texas- Brattle Group
- Texas Clean Energy Coalition.
The case being considered by the DC court is State of West Virginia v EPA.

What is "Stop and Frisk" anyway?

It was an area of disagreement between the candidates in last nights debate - and there seemed to be disagreement on whether the courts have ruled the practice unconstitutional.

A few items to help process all of it - or some of it.

From Cornell's LII:

A brief, non-intrusive, police stop of a suspect. The Fourth Amendment requires that the police have a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been, is being, or is about to be committed before stopping a suspect. If the police reasonably suspect the person is armed and dangerous, they may conduct a frisk, a quick pat-down of the person’s outer clothing. See Terry v Ohio, 392 US 1, (1967).

Notice the use of the term "reasonable suspicion" rather than "probable cause."

Reasonable suspicion allows the search - probable cause allows the arrest.

Because this stems from the case of Terry v Ohio - click here for it - these are also called Terry Stops.

Here is Cornell's definition of reasonable suspicion:

Reasonable suspicion is a standard used in criminal procedure. It is looser than probable cause. Reasonable suspicion is sufficient to justify brief stops and detentions, but not enough to justify a full search. When determining reasonable suspicion, courts consider the events leading up to the brief stop and a decide whether these facts, viewed from the standpoint of an objectively reasonable police officer, amount to reasonable suspicion. Courts look at the totality of the circumstances of each case to see whether the officer has a particularized and objective basis for suspecting legal wrongdoing.

For more on Stop and Frisk in New York City click here.

Does it deter crime? Does it impact minority populations disproportionately?

- Click here for that.

Fact Checking the Debate

The latest rage - if you are into facts of course.

- Politifact: Trump, Clinton debate fact-checks (a running collection).
- NYT: Our Fact Checks of the First Debate.
- CNN: Clinton, Trump clash in first debate: CNN's Reality Check Team vets the claims.
- NPR: Fact Check: Trump And Clinton Debate For The First Time.
- Washington Post: Fact-checking the first Clinton-Trump presidential debate.

FULL: Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton - First Presidential Debate 2016 -...

In case you missed it - you're welcome  - I guess. ;)

A Conversation with Joe Straus, Speaker of the Texas House of Representa...

From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: A Game of Chicken Between Texas, Its Biggest School District

More on the purpose of the proposition that will be offered to HISD voters related to capture - and some useful commentary on the problems posed by confusing ballot language.

- Click here for the article.

Voters in Texas’ biggest school district in Texas might do what the nine Republicans on the state’s Supreme Court wouldn’t do: Force the Legislature to overhaul the way it pays for public education.

Such a move would require some daring. Voters in the Houston Independent School District will have a choice in November to approve spending $165 million raised locally from school property taxes on other, poorer school districts in the state.

The ballot language is opaque, and a pretty good argument for improving the writing skills of the people in charge of state and local governments: “Authorizing the board of trustees of Houston Independent School District to purchase attendance credits from the state with local tax revenues.”

The actual choice presented by that ballot measure? Vote “for” spending $165 million of the district’s money in other districts, or vote “against” spending that money and risk taking $18 billion of the district’s commercial properties from the tax rolls and assigning them to the tax rolls of another district.

A “No” vote in November — urged by many of the HISD’s trustees, the city’s mayor, and others — would spark some political drama.

About one Texas school district in four spends some of its locally raised money to help educate students in districts that can’t raise enough money from their own tax bases. It’s called recapture by the policy wonks, but because it takes from “property rich” districts and gives to “property poor” districts, it’s more commonly called the Robin Hood system.

When a district’s voters refuse to go along — something that hasn’t happened — the Texas Education Agency is required to move part of that district’s property tax base to another, poorer district.

The agency obviously doesn’t move the real estate, but it would assign some of one district’s biggest commercial property taxpayers to pay taxes in another district. The law gives a preference to closer districts.

In HISD’s case, a “no” vote would mean taking an estimated $18 billion in property from that district’s rolls. The TEA would start with the most valuable properties and work its way down until it has taken away enough property to cover the $165 million or so that HISD owes under the Robin Hood system.

From Brazoria County: County Offices up for Election in 2016

For 2306's look at both county governments and the upcoming election.

- Click here for it.

To get an idea of what was on the ballot in 2014, click here for the election results.

From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: "Smitty," a Texas Lobbyist for the Small Fry, Retiring After 31 Years

While John Boehner begins his lobbying career in DC, another ends his in Austin.

As you'll see below, Smith advocated for issues that tend to cut against the grain of Texas' political culture. It's worth noting that the organization he headed was originally set up by Ralph Nader - not a Texan. The Wikipedia on Smith - see the link below - Mentions that he serves on the boards of the following advocacy groups: Clean Water Action, the Texas Wind Power Coalition, Texans for Public Justice, and Campaigns for People. All pro-regulation.

- Click here for the article.

In the early 90s — the heyday of consumer rights legislation and regulation in Texas — Robert Cullick, then a reporter at the Houston Chronicle, gave Tom “Smitty” Smith of Public Citizen Texas an unofficial title: Everybody’s Third Paragraph.

Smith, 66, announced his retirement Tuesday from his official post after 31 years, ending a long run of organizing and lobbying on behalf of consumers and citizens on a range of issues like utilities, insurance and political ethics. He was often the voice of the opposition in legislative fights and in the media, which earned him that reporter's epithet.

He’s from that part of the Austin lobby that doesn’t wear fancy suits, doesn’t drive the latest luxury cars and doesn’t spend its time fawning over and feeding elected officials. Smitty has a beard, an omnipresent straw hat and, often, a colorful sheaf of flyers making his points on whatever cause he’s pushing at the time.

Smitty has been a leading voice for government intervention and regulation of big industries and interests in the capital of a state with conservative, business-friendly politicians from both parties who pride themselves on light regulation, low taxes and a Wild West approach to money in politics.

. . . His causes over the years have included food security, decommissioning costs of the nuclear reactors owned by various Texas utilities, insurance regulations, ethics and campaign finance laws. He’s lobbied on environmental issues and product safety.

He counts the ethics reforms of 1991 as one of his big wins. As unregulated as Texas political ethics and campaign finance might seem today, things were a lot looser before reformers used a flurry of scandals and attendant media coverage to force changes. Smith is proud of a medical bill of rights that gave consumers some leverage with their doctors and their health insurers.

Public Citizen was a key player in the creation of the State Office of Administrative Hearings, which took administrative courts out of several regulatory agencies and put them in a central office, farther from the reach of regulated industries and elected officials. Smith now points to the Texas Railroad Commission, which still has its own administrative hearings, as an example of a too-close relationship between regulators, the companies they regulate and the judges supposed to referee their differences.

For more:

- Tribpedia: Tom "Smitty" Smith.
- Wikipedia: Public Citizen Texas.
- Public Citizen: Tom "Smitty" Smith.
- State Office of Administrative Hearings.
- Sunset Review: State Office of Administrative Hearings.
- Government Code: State Office of Administrative Hearings.
- Texas Ethics Commission.

From the New York Times: Former House Speaker John Boehner Joins Washington Law Firm

For our look at lobbying and the revolving door.

- Click here for the article.

John A. Boehner, the former speaker of the House who left Congress and his leadership post last year, is joining Squire Patton Boggs, a Washington-based law firm long known for its lobbying work.

However, Mr. Boehner, who served as speaker for four years and as a Republican representative from Ohio for 24 years, will not lobby in his new role at the law firm. Instead, he will serve “as a strategic adviser to clients” in the United States and abroad on global business development, according to the firm’s announcement.

“I left the private sector and got into public service decades ago because I wanted to help remove government barriers to economic growth and job creation, and that’s still the mission that drives me,” Mr. Boehner said in a statement on Tuesday.

This month, Mr. Boehner, a cigarette smoker, was appointed to the board of the tobacco giant Reynolds American, which is currently fending off more regulation of the industry, including regulation of e-cigarettes. He is to serve on the board’s committee for corporate governance, nominating and sustainability.

He has kept a relatively low profile since stepping down from the Republican leadership in September 2015, drawing occasional attention, as when he described Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, as “Lucifer in the flesh.”

In April, Mr. Boehner made a surprise video appearance with President Obama — with whom he had scorching political battles, including a lawsuit House Republicans filed accusing the president of abuse of his official powers — in a humorous vignette for the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

In it, Mr. Boehner offered a cigarette to President Obama, who once smoked but says he gave it up; he stuck to that stance in the video.

In his new law firm role, Mr. Boehner will not be working with political adversaries but with a cadre of his former staff members. They include two longtime aides, John Criscuolo and Amy Lozupone, who will join the firm, forming a team that also includes the former speaker’s deputy chief of staff, Dave Schnittger, and former policy adviser, Natasha Hammond.

An opinion piece from the Houston Chronicle: Robbing HISD - Voters should say 'no' to putting district under the Robin Hood recapture plan.

For 2306 mostly - this touched on single purpose governments, education policy, and referendum elections.

- Click here for it.

Voters will face a test on Election Day, and whether they answer correctly will determine the future of the Houston Independent School District. It should be a simple question, but it's written in the obtuse vernacular of lawmakers who really don't want voters to understand it.

The ballot provision will ask voters to authorize the board of trustees of HISD to purchase attendance credits from the state with local tax revenue. That sounds like a good, progressive measure, but be warned - it is a trick question.

The ballot is really asking whether HISD should submit itself to state recapture and send $162  million in local property tax dollars to Austin. The correct answer is "NO."

If this misleading ballot provision passes, HISD will not only be required to send $162 million in local property tax dollars to the state next year. The district will also likely face higher annual payments for the foreseeable future under the state's broken school finance system.

The mandate comes about because rising property values have made HISD subject to "Robin Hood" provisions under the Texas Education Code. All those skyscrapers and rapidly appreciating homes have apparently pushed HISD over the top.

As Texas schools are financed through property taxes, the recapture provisions (what we know as Robin Hood) were supposed to provide a way to equalize school funding across the state - for poor and wealthy schools alike.

In May, the Texas Supreme Court held that this system of school finance is marginally constitutional. Consider that assessment a D-minus grade. The fact of the matter is that the state's school funding formula fails to accomplish its intended goals of helping poor school districts.

Technically these recaptured funds are supposed to help schools that need the resources. If the provision worked like a true Robin Hood, it would "rob" from the rich and "give" to the poor. But in reality, the system robs from the poor and gives to legislators so that they don't have to raise state taxes. There's no guarantee that poor schools will receive a single extra dime if HISD pays up.

How does this work? Simply put, the state keeps two bank accounts: one for general revenue and one for the recaptured Robin Hood sums. Every dollar that the state pays from Robin Hood frees up general revenue money that the state otherwise would have to spend to help poor schools. So instead of giving extra money to needy districts, any HISD money will essentially be spent on highways, border security or some other appropriation besides education.

If this passes, then HISD is projected to send more than $1 billion of our local property taxes to the state over the next four years. Not only does that hurt HISD, but it looks an awful lot like a state property tax - which is prohibited in the Texas Constitution.
Houston's economy is strong and diverse, but to maintain that edge Houston needs well-educated students. If HISD has to pay recapture, it will face a $95 million budget deficit in the next budget cycle.

In an ironic twist, that budget deficit will end up hurting the very students that Robin Hood is supposed to help. More than 75 percent of HISD students are disadvantaged. It is a sign of our bizarre and busted school finance system that the district with the largest number of poor families will have to give away critically needed resources.

Voters can block this preposterous outcome. By voting no, Houstonians will keep their money and instead authorize the commissioner of education to detach $18 billion worth of commercial property from HISD and assign it to other school districts. This has never happened before, and such a radical move would give the Legislature an opportunity to rectify the situation.

A "no" vote won't end the problem. However, it will give the Legislature the entire 2017 session to fix school finance in Texas and keep local taxpayer dollars in our HISD schools.

It is a tricky question, but the answer is simple. Vote "No" on attendance credits.

From the Houston Chronicle: Precinct 4's evidence destruction scandal part of larger pattern in constables' offices

For 2306, and our coverage of county offices.

- Click here for the article.

With Harris County's Precinct 4 Constable's Office mired in scandal over the improper destruction of 21,000 pieces of evidence, serious evidence cataloging and control problems also have been uncovered in the constables' offices in Precincts 3,6 and 7, according to interviews and audits obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

While there is no proof yet that evidence has been unlawfully destroyed in those other three offices, 2,000 items were initially reported missing in Precinct 3; guns, jewelry, electronics and cash were misplaced in Precinct 6; and Precinct 7's evidence room has been described as "a shambles."

In Precinct 4, where the evidence destruction scandal is still unfolding, prosecutors so far have dismissed 100 criminal cases and are still determining how many convictions could be affected by years of careless work blamed on a corporal fired for illegally disposing of drugs, guns and evidence. The episode remains the subject of a criminal probe.

Only time will tell whether chaotic evidence handling practices reported in Precincts 3,6 and 7 will result in case dismissals, appeals or further investigations.

Harris County auditors in May 2015 uncovered evidence problems - never made public - in a review of the overstuffed property room inside the Precinct  6 Constable's Office in the East End. There, auditors reported finding 28 percent of the evidence missing along with $54,000 in cash in a review of a sample of 799 items, the audit shows. Their visit to the office came only months after the previous constable, Victor Treviño, resigned after pleading guilty to misappropriating money from a charity he ran out of his office.

From the New York Times: Will the Left Survive the Millennials?

An opinion piece.

For our look at ideology, free speech, and public opinion.

- Click here for the article.

When I was growing up in the ’60s and early ’70s, conservatives were the enforcers of conformity. It was the right that was suspicious, sniffing out Communists and scrutinizing public figures for signs of sedition.

Now the role of oppressor has passed to the left. In Australia, where I spoke, Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act makes it unlawful to do or say anything likely to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate,” providing alarming latitude in the restriction of free speech. It is Australia’s conservatives arguing for the amendment of this law.

As a lifelong Democratic voter, I’m dismayed by the radical left’s ever-growing list of dos and don’ts — by its impulse to control, to instill self-censorship as well as to promote real censorship, and to deploy sensitivity as an excuse to be brutally insensitive to any perceived enemy. There are many people who see these frenzies about cultural appropriation, trigger warnings, micro-aggressions and safe spaces as overtly crazy. The shrill tyranny of the left helps to push them toward Donald Trump.

Ironically, only fellow liberals will be cowed by terror of being branded a racist (a pejorative lobbed at me in recent days — one that, however groundless, tends to stick). But there’s still such a thing as a real bigot, and a real misogynist. In obsessing over micro-aggressions like the sin of uttering the commonplace Americanism “you guys” to mean “you all,” activists persecute fellow travelers who already care about equal rights.
Moreover, people who would hamper free speech always assume that they’re designing a world in which only their enemies will have to shut up. But free speech is fragile. Left-wing activists are just as dependent on permission to speak their minds as their detractors.

In an era of weaponized sensitivity, participation in public discourse is growing so perilous, so fraught with the danger of being caught out for using the wrong word or failing to uphold the latest orthodoxy in relation to disability, sexual orientation, economic class, race or ethnicity, that many are apt to bow out. Perhaps intimidating their elders into silence is the intention of the identity-politics cabal — and maybe my generation should retreat to our living rooms and let the young people tear one another apart over who seemed to imply that Asians are good at math.

From the Pew Research Center: 5 facts about illegal immigration in the U.S.

For fact checking:

- Click here for the article.

1 - There were 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2014, a total unchanged from 2009 and accounting for 3.5% of the nation’s population 

2 - Mexicans made up 52% of all unauthorized immigrants in 2014, though their numbers had been declining in recent years.

3 - The number of unauthorized immigrants from nations other than Mexico grew by 325,000 since 2009, to an estimated 5.3 million in 2014.

4 - Six states accounted for 59% of unauthorized immigrants in 2014: California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. But some state populations had changed since 2009, despite the stable trend at the national level.

5 - A rising share of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the U.S. for at least a decade.

From the Pew Research Center: Biggest share of whites in U.S. are Boomers, but for minority groups it’s Millennials or younger

A change is a gonna come:

- Click here for the article.

There were more 24-year-olds in the U.S. than people of any other age in 2015. But for white Americans, 55 was the most common age, according to Census Bureau data. 

In the histogram above, which shows the total number of individuals of each age last year, non-Hispanic whites tend to skew toward the older end of the spectrum (more to the right), while minority groups skew younger (more to the left).

From the Texas Tribune: Texas Appeals Voter ID Rulings to U.S. Supreme Court

For our look at federalism, as well as voting rights.

- Click here for the article.

Texas wants to take its voter identification battle to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday asked the justices to hear his arguments about why the state’s photo ID requirements for voting do not discriminate against Hispanics and African-American voters.

“Safeguarding the integrity of our elections is essential to preserving our democracy,” the Republican said in a statement. "Texas enacted a common-sense voter ID law and I am confident that the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately reinstate it.”

Texas officials say the voter ID law bolsters the integrity of elections by preventing voter fraud, which Gov. Greg Abbott has called "rampant." But the U.S. Department of Justice and other plaintiffs — backed by court rulings — have pointed out that in-person voter fraud is incredibly rare.

In July, U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed lower court rulings that the 2011 law, considered the nation’s strictest, violates the federal Voting Rights Act. In a 9-6 ruling, the conservative court agreed that narrowly tailored requirements disproportionately affected minority voters — those who were less likely to hold one of seven types of photo ID. Those include: a state driver's license or ID card, a concealed handgun license, a U.S. passport, a military ID card, a U.S citizenship certificate or an election identification certificate.

Experts have testified that more than 600,000 Texans lack such identification, though not all of them have necessarily tried to vote.

Paxton is appealing to a Supreme Court that still has just eight members, following the February death of Justice Antonin Scalia. If the justices agree to hear the case — and if they do so without a replacement for Scalia — Paxton would need five votes to overturn the appeals court ruling. A 4-4 split would allow it to stand.

From the NYT: Obama Vetoes Saudi 9/11 Bill, but Congressional Override Is Expected

As expected.

- Click here for the article.

President Obama vetoed legislation on Friday that would allow families of victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia for any role in the plot, setting up an extraordinary confrontation with a Congress that unanimously backed the bill and has vowed to uphold it.

Mr. Obama’s long-anticipated veto of the measure, known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, is the 12th of his presidency. But unless those who oppose the bill can persuade lawmakers to drop their support by next week, it will lead to the first congressional override of a veto during Mr. Obama’s presidency — a familiar experience for presidents in the waning months of their terms.

In his veto message to Congress, Mr. Obama said the legislation “undermines core U.S. interests,” upending the normal means by which the government singles out foreign nations as state sponsors of terrorism and opening American officials and military personnel to legal jeopardy. It would put United States assets at risk of seizure by private litigants overseas and “create complications” in diplomatic relations with other countries, he added.

“I have deep sympathy for the families of the victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, who have suffered grievously,” Mr. Obama wrote. But enacting the measure “would neither protect Americans from terrorist attacks nor improve the effectiveness of our response to such attacks.”

Mr. Obama issued the veto behind closed doors on Friday without fanfare, reluctant to call attention to a debate that has pitted him against the families of terrorism victims. Not long before he did so, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, who had previously backed the measure, confirmed that if she were in the Oval Office, she would sign it.

The leaders of both chambers, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, have said they expect the override vote to be successful, which requires a two-thirds majority.

From Jurist: 'Sister Wives' family appeals polygamy ruling to Supreme Court

From the cutting edge of equal protection.

Polygamist got a boost when the Supreme Court ruled that the "fundamental" right of marriage could not be denied to same sex couples under equal protection clause. If sexual orientation is protected, might polygamy?

If the Supreme Court accepts the case we will find out. The question is whether a compelling public purpose is served by the limit.

- Click here for the article.

A polygamous family on TLC's "Sister Wives" [media website] reality TV show filed a request [cert. petition, PDF] on Monday with the US Supreme Court in an attempt to legalize polygamy. Kody Brown and his four wives filed the appeal after the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit [official website] threw out a constitutional challenge [opinion, PDF; JURISTreport] to Utah's anti-bigamy laws [text]. They specifically want the Supreme Court to review a lower court decision upholding part of Utah's polygamy law banning cohabitation with other partners even when the man is only legally married to one woman.

In 2014 a judge for the US District Court for the District of Utah [official website] refused to dismiss the case as moot and proceeded to the merits, striking down [JURIST report] portions of Utah's anti-bigamy statute. While polygamy is recognized in most of Africa and the Middle East, it is illegal in most of North and South America, Europe and China. In 2005 the US District Court for the District of Utah rejected a similar lawsuit[JURIST report] brought against Utah's Anti-Bigamy Statute, reaffirming the 1879 US Supreme Court case Reynolds v. United States [opinion, text], which upheld a conviction under an anti-polygamy law as constitutional.

Lots of links to follow above.

- Click here for the 10th Circuit Court's refusal to rehear the case - which is why they are taking it to the Supreme Court.

The Catholic News Agency doesn't think the Supreme Court will approve polygamy - assuming they even take the case.

- Click here for that.

Robin Williams? Another rant of the day

My rant is that Professor Jeffries looks too much like Robin Williams. Of course, this is
debatable that he even looks like him, but it really, really bothers me walking into class every other day of the week and then get a small glimpse of Jefferies walking in through the door and I get this tiny little glimmer of hope that it actually is him and that he didn’t commit suicide two years ago but no, it’s just false hope when I realize it’s merely my Texas Government professor. And not only that, but because of the alikeness the two have, I end up mourning Robin Williams even more and I feel like binge watching all of his films from Good Will Hunting to Dead Poet’s Society to Aladdin or maybe even Mrs. Doubtfire for the heck of it on my phone but nooooOOOOOooooo I need to pay attention in class and act like everything is okay even if Jefferies isn’t jumping on the desks like Williams did in Dead Poet’s Society. The amount of sadness that I have walking in the class knowing that I have a doppelganger teaching me Texas Government instead of being a really cool and charismatic genie pulls at my heartstrings so much I feel like they are going to burst at any given moment. So yes, this concludes my rant.

Rant of the day

I agree completely.

It doesn't take much to cause a traffic jam.

I will be ranting about people who drive slow in the passing lane. I lived in Germany for 2 years, over there it is ingrained into society that the left lane is the passing lane, notoriously known as the "fast lane". Every single person abides by this, it is efficient, and it allows traffic to flow smoothly. Granted, I understand that sometimes traffic cannot be reduced, simply because of traffic accidents or construction. However, what I can not seem to understand is how someone can continue to sit in the left lane, next to another car, and reduce the movement of those drivers behind that person. What blows my mind even more is even in the places where signs are posted saying "left lane for passing only", these drivers are still coasting in that lane. On top of that in Texas it is illegal to sit there in the left lane and impede the flow of traffic. If you free up that left lane, and allow cars to flow, then traffic moves efficiently. I dont know if it is old age, ignorance, or lack of situational awareness, but it really grinds my gears. This is especially applicable when traveling long distances in the car. When I would drive from Kentucky to Texas it would never fail, there would always be a vehicle just coasting in the fast lane. Preventing everyone from freely passing and putting their car on cruise control. We need to be more like Germany as far as the left lane, and also maybe add in an autobahn.

Things not to do downtown.

From the Christian Science Monitor: Prayer and politics in Congress - How prayer meetings on Capitol Hill inspire fellowship and foster bipartisan lawmaking, though some argue it is too much religion under the rotunda.

Does this violate the establishment clause?

Or does it help create unity?

- Click here for the article.

Prayer has always been a presence on Capitol Hill. In the 19th century, religious services were actually held in the House chamber because it was the biggest space in a town still under construction and lacking public buildings.

“The House was used for church services, but it wasn’t a church,” says Donald Ritchie, former Senate historian. “It was used for funerals, but it wasn’t a funeral parlor. It was a space that was available.”

Those practices ended in the 1840s, when enough churches had been built to accommodate lawmakers and their families. What still survives from the First Congress of 1789 to this day – and which many secularists object to – are two chaplains, one for the House and one for the Senate, underwritten by US taxpayers. The chaplains, or a guest, offer a prayer at the opening of each day that Congress is in session, and they minister to the members, their staffs, and their families.

When he was the Senate historian, Mr. Ritchie says he often had to answer queries from outraged citizens and visitors who viewed the chaplaincy and opening prayers as a violation of the separation of church and state. But Article 1 of the Constitution allows the chambers to “chuse” their officers, and the chaplains have always been officers, the historian says. As the current Senate chaplain, Barry Black, notes on his web page, the chamber honors the separation of church and state, “but not the separation of God and State.”

The Supreme Court agrees. In 1983, it held that a chaplaincy and opening prayers in legislatures do not violate the Constitution (Marsh v. Chambers). In 2014, it upheld opening prayers at municipal meetings, so long as the practice is not discriminatory. That ruling could soon get a test. Dan Barker, an atheist who founded the Freedom From Religion Foundation, is suing the House chaplain and speaker for barring him from offering a secular invocation in Congress. The group also objects to the prayer breakfasts, which are organized by the lawmakers.

From Vox: A conservative intellectual explains why the GOP has fallen to Donald Trump

More evidence of the impact Trump is having on the Republican Party.

- Click here for the article.

Samuel Goldman is one of America’s most thoughtful conservatives. A professor of political theory at George Washington University and the executive director of its Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom, he spends his days pondering the ideas that define American politics.

Recently, Goldman has come to an uncomfortable conclusion: The conservative movement has failed. Its traditional package of ideas — free market economics, social conservatism, and an interventionist foreign policy — has long dominated the Republican Party but has clearly failed to win over enough actual voters to secure the White House.

“The great message of Trump is that there really are not that many movement conservatives,” Goldman told me during a sit-down near his office. “Since conservative politicians and policies have stopped delivering peace and prosperity, I think it’s more or less inevitable that voters have become dissatisfied.”

Moreover, he argued, the GOP and conservative movement has embraced a vision of America — Sarah Palin’s “Real America,” more or less — that can’t appeal to anybody but white Christians. A (somewhat controversial) census projection suggests that the US will be a majority minority country in the next 30 years — an unfriendly environment, to say the least, for the GOP.

“If you project yourself as a white Christian provincial party, you're not going to get very many votes among people who are none of those things,” Goldman says. “That's what's happened over the last 10 or 15 years.”

The 1866 Texas Black Codes

For our look at civil rights.

- Click here for them.

For more: TSHA - Black Codes

From the Christian Science Monitor: Politics is crippling the US economy, Harvard study says - According to an annual competitiveness survey, dysfunction within federal government is the single biggest barrier to economic progress in the United States.

Dysfunction has a real, tangible cost.

- Click here for the article.

Despite somewhat encouraging news this week that the middle and lower-wage workers appeared to see relief in 2015 as the US median household income finally rose, most Americans are much worse off than they were two decades ago.

This is not the product of the natural dips and bumps that typically punctuate our economy. According to a study released Thursday by Harvard Business School, the biggest threat to US competitiveness is our crippled political system and the “unrealistic and ineffective national discourse on the reality of the challenges facing the U.S. economy,” study authors reported.

“A lot of people think that what’s going in is we had a bad recession and that we’re just recovering,” Michael Porter, a study author and co-chair of Harvard’s Competitiveness Project, which conducts an annual survey of US business leaders, tells CNBC. “What we find is that all the major data points that started moving in the wrong direction started in the late 90s and 2000s.”

These data points plot a picture that doesn’t bode well for small businesses and average American workers, whose pay and job opportunities are declining as they’re competing with workers around the globe.

"We used to have the most skilled workers in world; now we don’t,” Dr. Porter says.

From the Washington Monthly: Which Federal Programs Best Reduce Poverty? As many as 1 in 5 Americans would be in poverty without Social Security and tax credits for the working poor.

A few rants went off on welfare programs. I stumbled on the following article that attempts to measure their effectiveness.

They focus on an alternative measure of poverty, and what it would be if one of nine different federal poverty programs did not exist. The one that is generally called "welfare" is FANF - Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

- Click here for it.

Rant of the day

You know what really grinds my gears? What really boils my britches? What really un-butters my biscuit? Reality TV shows on channels they don’t belong on, like why should I care about some veterinarians office on Animal Planet, who watches Animal Planet for people? And all these gimmicky cooking competitions on the Food Network, sorry Guy Fieri but I couldn’t care less about your dumb grocery show. But by far the worst offender is the History Channel, Pawn Stars? Really? That’s the best you could come up with? Random people bringing in mildly interesting trivia pieces to haggle? And while we’re on the History Channel let’s talk about Ancient Aliens. I mean seriously how could a channel literally dedicated to history have such a hilariously inaccurate show as one of their main series. When did it become popular to over complicate such simple things? It’s so easy for these channels, Food network; show how to make food, History Channel; show history, Animal Planet; literally just show animals, like that’s it, that’s all you need to do. Now I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a variety of shows on these channels, I love shows like Chopped and what not, but when literally all your shows feature some gimmick or some goofy cast of characters, like what are you doing, why try to reinvent the wheel. Anyways that’s all I’m capable of typing without having a mild brain aneurysm. Now I’m off to sit and think about how far humanity has fallen to have Ancient Aliens on cable TV, or any form of broadcast media for that matter.

From the NYT: Bombing Case Points to Gaps in Trump’s and Clinton’s Antiterrorism Plans

- Click here for the article.

There is nothing in Donald J. Trump’s or Hillary Clinton’s antiterrorism plans that would have had much chance of stopping the bombings in New York and New Jersey that Ahmad Khan Rahami is accused of carrying out.

The subject of how to prevent terrorism will almost certainly be a major topic on Monday night, when the two presidential candidates face off in their first debate. But the truth is that cases like Mr. Rahami’s fit neatly into no categories.

And his journey from childhood immigrant to naturalized citizen to accused terrorist shows that the debate now underway on the campaign trail is too simplistic. It fails to address the hardest and most common cause of radicalization in the United States, when personal demons morph into ideologically driven violence.

Mr. Rahami came to the United States from Afghanistan as a 7-year-old, and later became a citizen. Mr. Trump’s insistence in recent days that he has no problem with ethnic profiling might have led to tougher interrogations of Mr. Rahami when he traveled to Quetta, Pakistan, the center of Taliban power, and returned, or when he came back from there with a Pakistani wife.

The strongest indication of his leanings came in 2014 when the local police and the F.B.I. investigated Mr. Rahami’s father’s claim that his son was a terrorist. But finding no evidence, the authorities did not act. Since Mr. Rahami is an American citizen, the only way he could have been locked up without being charged was with a detention system similar to the way Japanese-Americans were placed in Japanese “internment camps” during World War II.

That was a technique, Mr. Trump told Time magazine in December, that he might or might not have supported at the time. He added that as undesirable as it would be to revive such an arrangement, in an age of terrorism, “war is tough.”

Mrs. Clinton’s approach would be to rely on countermessaging to prevent radicalization and to try to recognize early signs of extremism. But no one seems quite certain how Mr. Rahami was radicalized — on the internet, during trips to Pakistan or perhaps by his new wife. And Mrs. Clinton’s approach, even its advocates acknowledge, is no guarantee — it tries to stem the tide, rather than reverse it.

Mr. Trump, in short, has described a policy of keeping potential terrorists out of the country altogether, even if that means suspending or violating America’s longstanding principles of taking in refugees and not discriminating against immigrants on the basis of their religion. Mrs. Clinton, in contrast, has argued for the vetting of immigrants — about their history or sympathy for radical ideology — but working to counter extremists messages or behavior.